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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26786986">What You Are to Me</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/beastboy12/pseuds/beastboy12'>beastboy12</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Umbrella Academy (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Number Five | The Boy Has Issues, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, Number Five | The Boy-centric, POV Second Person, help i can't stop writing about five</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 05:54:28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,670</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26786986</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/beastboy12/pseuds/beastboy12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"When he moves that first stone to start making graves for them, your heart does something funny in your chest, and it’s then that you decide you will do everything in your power to help him.</p><p>Which, since you can’t actually do anything, amounts to following him everywhere."</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>128</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>What You Are to Me</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I had a sudden urge to write about Five from an outsider's perspective, and thus this monster was born.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <h1>What You Are to Me</h1><p>You died from smoke inhalation.</p><p>Perhaps you were luckier than some, but for the most part, you think you were unluckier than the majority of the world. They got to be incinerated - one moment here; the next, not. You would’ve liked to go out that way.</p><p>But, alas, you were in your basement when the Earth quite literally burst into flames, so you got to enjoy being smothered to death by smoke.</p><p>You still don’t know what caused the end of the world, days later, but knowing that doesn’t matter as much as you thought it might.</p><p>The good news is, being dead isn’t so bad. It’s boring, and the other ghosts you’ve run into have been mostly incoherent, babbling breakdowns, but it could be worse. Probably.</p><p>Then, one day, as flames still lick at the few buildings left to burn, you hear someone.</p><p>“Vanya! Ben!”</p><p>You’re instantly intrigued. A voice that clear, that loud, has to come from someone alive. </p><p>So you follow that voice to the husk of a mansion, and there you find a boy with dark hair and clean skin and you’re not sure how it’s possible, but he obviously wasn’t around when the world ended. You’re not sure what “around” even means when discussing the entire planet, but you know it’s true, because the boy’s eyes get bigger and more horrified the longer he looks at what’s left.</p><p>I.e., nothing.</p><p>You’re very curious now, and you decide you can take time out of your busy schedule to see what he’ll do. You watch as he picks through the rubble, as he discovers the bodies of four people in the debris.</p><p>Oh, no, you think sadly as his breathing hitches. He’s too young to see this.</p><p>But he’s stronger than you give him credit for, because he doesn’t cry yet. He stumbles to his feet and hobbles a few paces away, and you turn away as he starts retching.</p><p>You can handle the sight of vomit, but if that were you, you’d want some privacy.</p><p>You wonder who those people are to him. It’s gotta be family - maybe his parents? Aunts? Uncles?</p><p>You think he’s going to leave now, walk away from the horrific sight of corpses he once knew, but you hear footsteps crunch on gravel.</p><p>When he moves that first stone to start making graves for them, your heart does something funny in your chest, and it’s then that you decide you will do everything in your power to help him.</p><p>Which, since you can’t actually do anything, amounts to following him everywhere.</p><p>You’re with him when he salvages a case of bottled water from underneath a ruined store. You’re with him when he coughs up blood for the first time, which becomes more regular the longer he breathes in ash. You’re with him when he excitedly yanks a book out of the shell of a library wall and begins scouring it, his excitement dimming the more he reads.</p><p>You’re with him when he meets Dolores.</p><p>You’re <em> extremely </em> concerned at first - he doesn’t seem to realize that it’s a mannequin he’s full-on gaping at - but you learn to appreciate her, because she does what you cannot. </p><p>She comforts him.</p><p>And for the first time since the day he screamed those names in a barren wasteland, you hear him talk, and he talks a <em> lot</em>. He tells Dolores how he got here (time travel - it would’ve sounded crazier to you if you were not currently dead and standing in the middle of the wreckage of an entire planet), how difficult it was to bury his siblings, how upset he is that he can’t find Vanya’s body, although part of him knows it’s good that he’ll never see her as a corpse, how he’s going to save the world if it’s the last thing he does.</p><p>He tells you all those things, too, but he doesn’t know that.</p><p>Talking to Dolores is what finally makes him cry.</p><p>And so, despite the bizarreness of the relationship, you’re glad it happened. He needed someone who wasn’t a ghost.</p><p>Even it it ended up being a mannequin.</p><p>You follow him and Dolores for months. Every day, he impresses you with how well he’s able to adapt and survive. Dolores helps ease some of the emotional and mental pain.</p><p>She can’t help with the nightmares.</p><p>Of course, neither can you.</p><p>You sit next to him and pretend your hand rests on his shoulder instead of passing through when he twists and turns in his sleep. You pretend your arms wrap around instead of through him when he wakes up screaming.</p><p>If you think about it hard enough, you do as much pretending as he does in that fiery landscape.</p><p>But you pretend you don’t know that.</p><p>Several years pass, and you know the name of every one of his siblings, exactly how much of a dick his father was, and how many reminders of his family he can see before his eyes glaze over.</p><p>“You know, Dolores,” he says one day, “you don’t talk about yourself very much. What were you doing before -” he pulls a dry smile underneath his even drier start of a beard - “all this?”</p><p>Well, you say, I was an accountant for a law firm. It was kind of boring, but I didn’t mind. I’ve always liked numbers.</p><p>“Right, Gimbels, of course,” he says. “It’s where we first met.” He settles back on his haunches and squints at Dolores as the always-hazy sky starts to darken. “Did you have any family?”</p><p>A younger sister I loved, although I only ever told her how annoying she was. A loving spouse. I didn’t get along very well with my mom, but my dad shared my sense of humor.</p><p>“Yeah, I pegged you for an only child. Friends?”</p><p>I met my best friend in college. We did everything together.</p><p>Except for dying.</p><p>He smiles at whatever Dolores says, and you desperately hope he finds a way out of here.</p><p>Decades later, he does.</p><p>He’s an old man now, and yet in your head, you still think of him as “the boy.” You don’t think you’ll ever forget what he looked like when he first appeared as a thirteen year-old boy in the apocalypse. </p><p>You also don’t think anyone has ever known or will ever know him as intimately as you do. Looking back, you see the pure genius of Dolores, the wisdom of finding her. He would’ve gone mad years ago without his mind fabricating her, which you find ironic - an insane action is what prevents his insanity.</p><p>At least, most of it.</p><p>When the woman with the too-perfect curls appears outside his current abode, you’re as shocked as he is.</p><p>You forgot there was ever anyone besides him, you, and Dolores.</p><p>You immediately don’t trust her, and that distrust turns to hatred when you find out how she got here. She could have showed up <em> decades </em> ago, but she didn’t.</p><p>Also, those heels are pretentious.</p><p>But she’s an <em> out </em> and that’s exactly what you wanted for him, so it’s hard not to want him to take the deal.</p><p>The selfish part of you is sad he’ll be leaving. It’ll be just you and Dolores left, and you don’t personally find mannequins to be great conversationalists.</p><p>You’ll be as alone as he always thought he was.</p><p>You’ve been wondering about your “purpose,” though. Don’t ghosts exist because they have an unfulfilled something or other? Like, a wish, or a dream, or something? And once it’s fulfilled, don’t they head toward that bright light with a contented smile on their face? Maybe him getting out of the apocalypse is yours. Maybe you’ll vanish when he does.</p><p>He takes the woman’s hand, but you don’t disappear.</p><p>Neither does he. </p><p>Instead, there’s a flash of light, and suddenly you’re both standing in a courtyard.</p><p>If you could still breathe, you would’ve been unable to for a second, because you are surrounded by green grass and a blue sky. It’s as if the apocalypse hasn’t happened here.</p><p>He flinches as though he’s been struck. It’s too much all at once, you think. It’d be one thing if it were <em> just </em> colors and clean air, but it’s colors and clean air and sound and living people. Employees bustle in and out of the white building they’re standing in front of, chatting casually and laughing.</p><p>Laughter.</p><p>You’d forgotten that existed, too.</p><p>The novelty wears off quickly for you, because it’s immediately obvious that whatever this woman works for is dark. Deadly.</p><p>Not fit for a boy.</p><p>But he is nothing if not single-minded, and you know that he’s willing to warp his sense of right and wrong to keep the promise he whispered to a broken mannequin on a night you still couldn’t see the stars.</p><p>It was the same promise he made to the four bodies he buried.</p><p>
  <em> “I’ll go back and save you.” </em>
</p><p>But when he kills his first target, a twenty-something single mother, you wonder who will save him.</p><p>He misses Dolores like a missing limb, but he’s immensely grateful she doesn’t have to see him like this.</p><p>He doesn’t say that - he hardly talks at all, now that she’s not here - but you know him better than you know yourself at this point.</p><p>You have a hard time watching him murder people, but you need to be there for him, even if he doesn’t know it, so you force yourself to stand at his side every time he pulls the trigger. When the bodies hit the ground, you see four poorly-made graves in rubble.</p><p>You wonder what he sees.</p><p>There were other ghosts in the apocalypse, but not as many as you thought there would be. You guess most people were pretty satisfied with their lives when they burned to a crisp.</p><p>There are way more ghosts now.</p><p>They trail after him like a cape of ethereal beings, shrieking questions their murderer can’t hear.</p><p>You understand their pain, their confusion, but some have malevolent intent when they approach him. You’re pretty sure they can’t interact with him - after all, you’ve been trying for nearly half a century, to no avail - but you don’t like having them that close to him. Maybe it’s only in your head, but you think he’s been sleeping more poorly (than usual, that is) since they showed up.</p><p>So you make it your job to keep the ghosts of his victims away from him. He probably doesn’t deserve it - he probably <em> should </em> be haunted by his mistakes. But you know, even though he’ll never admit it, he’s haunted enough by them in his head, and, honestly, he’s been through so much already. </p><p>The ones who are only confused by their seemingly senseless deaths are easy to lead to the light you’ve never seen. The ones with rage and revenge swirling around them are harder to keep away. Some eventually find acceptance in their deaths, but others never will, so you fight them until they leave.</p><p>You’ve never been a fighter - your memories from before your death grow hazier with every passing year, but you’re fairly certain you’d never even thrown a punch while alive - but you feel strong when you fend off the vengeful spirits successfully.</p><p>And, somehow, you manage to keep him safe.</p><p>Then, one day, he figures out the right equation. He creates a glowing blue portal that transports him back to the past.</p><p>You think that maybe you’ll see that light, now that he’s successfully traveled back in time, but it doesn’t come.</p><p>You’re immensely proud of him, ecstatic that he’ll finally see his family. It takes a few seconds for you to notice that he’s become the very same boy who buried his siblings all those years ago, because he’s never stopped looking like that to you.</p><p>You see one of the siblings - you know it’s Klaus because of how accurately the boy described each of his family members - make eye contact with you for a brief second.</p><p>That hasn’t happened in . . . well, a while.</p><p>There’s a ghost next to Klaus, and you somehow know it’s Ben without having to be told.</p><p>You’re severely disappointed in the boy when he talks to his siblings. No, more than disappointed - you’re<em> mad</em>. You know what he wants to say to all of them - he only rehearsed it about a <em> million </em> times in front of Dolores - and you also know he won’t say it, just like you know he won’t accept help from any of them.</p><p>You understand, but it doesn’t make you any less angry. You’ve waited for this moment your <em> whole life</em>, you say to him, and this is what you do with it?</p><p>But he’s leaving before his siblings even have time to process what just happened, before he lets any of them see who he is now.</p><p>He’s ashamed of the person he’s become.</p><p>He’s afraid they won’t want him.</p><p>It’s enough to make a ghost cry, if you could remember how.</p><p>He finds Dolores, and although the reunion ends in a gunfight, you’re glad he did. He needed to see her again.</p><p>You watch as he shoulders the weight of the world, the even heavier weight of the apocalypse, on his own. You watch him try to explain the apocalypse to his siblings, but it’s been too long since he’s talked to anyone besides Dolores like this, because he doesn’t know what’s important enough to be mentioned.</p><p>Like an open, gaping wound in his stomach, for instance.</p><p>But, eventually, the family bands together and almost saves the world. </p><p>Key word being almost.</p><p>He pulls all of them through the fabric of time, but of <em> course </em> that doesn’t go as planned, because it took him forty-some years to figure out how to properly cross time with <em> one </em> person, let alone six.</p><p>Well, seven, including Ben.</p><p>Eight, including yourself.</p><p>Rinse, recycle, repeat, because he gets to watch his siblings die almost as soon as he arrives in the 60’s, and now he has to save them - and the world - again.</p><p>It’s <em> slightly </em> more coordinated this time, you suppose. He’s at least sort of using his siblings this time.</p><p>But something heavy settles in your non-existent gut when you follow him to the woman who’d greeted him in the apocalypse.</p><p>Don’t do this to yourself, you say.</p><p>You see the rising panic in his shaking limbs when he goes for the candy bar in the vending machine. You see the determination in his footsteps when he walks past the cake, running a finger along the side of it in order to ingest anything, anything at all, to help steel his nerves.</p><p>You see the resignation in his eyes when he grabs the axe.</p><p>You can still stop, you say, knowing he won’t.</p><p>You said he’s willing to warp his own sense of right and wrong for his family, but that isn’t true.</p><p>He’s willing to ignore right and wrong for his family.</p><p>He gives the fish to the woman, and you can tell how much he loathes the sticky residue of blood coating him.</p><p>The woman tricked him with her promise. Big shocker, you say dryly. I didn’t see <em> that </em> coming from a mile away.</p><p>But you’re more sad than upset with him. You know how desperate he was. Is.</p><p>Forget what you said earlier about the family being coordinated, because of course they don’t all show up in time to go home.</p><p>The next time they’re all together, you don’t see Ben.</p><p>They’re at a barn, now, and you wince in sympathy at every blow he receives, including, but not limited to, frying pans, bricks, and fists.</p><p>You think they’ve won when you see the woman sneaking toward the barn door.</p><p><em> The door, </em> you scream. <em> Look out. </em></p><p>Klaus’s gaze darts toward you, and you see his brow furrow in confusion.</p><p>But it doesn’t matter, because the gun goes off, and everyone’s dead now.</p><p>Except him.</p><p>Except the survivor, the boy who’s been to hell and back.</p><p>Your heart aches.</p><p>He’s panting heavily, blood - his own, this time - pooling around him.</p><p>He’s not dead yet, but he will be soon.</p><p>Everybody dies eventually, but not like this. Not him.</p><p>You remember what his father said, and so you bend close to his ear and whisper, “Seconds, not decades.”</p><p>He balls shaking hands into fists and starts to slowly pull time backward. You’re so relieved you nearly scream.</p><p>Then he’s at the door, knocking the gun away, and you know they’ve truly won this time.</p><p>Just watching the last two weeks has drained you, and you’re already dead. You know how tired he must be. You see the way his eyes constantly flit between each one of his siblings. He’s checking to make sure they’re still alive.</p><p>You see him turn to the side while the others are distracted, his mouth opening as if to speak and his shoulders sagging in relief, but he realizes Dolores is not there, and the momentary light in his eyes dims.</p><p>Okay, you think. You’ve seen him stop <em> two </em> apocalypses now - surely you’ll see the light now.</p><p>You do not.</p><p>They get back to 2019, and they’ve been there several days when Klaus finds him alone in the library. You’ve been amusing yourself by trying to read titles on the spines of books upside down.</p><p>“Hey, Five,” Klaus says.</p><p>He looks up from the book he’s reading, already annoyed. “What?”</p><p>Klaus beams. “I love how happy you are when you see me.” He doesn’t move to join the boy on the couch, like you thought he would.</p><p>Instead, his eyes flicker toward you before he hastily looks away.</p><p>You stop your spine-reading game, intrigued. Is Klaus here for you?</p><p>“I thought you should know,” Klaus says, “you have a ghost.”</p><p>The boy stares at Klaus blankly. “What does that mean?”</p><p>“A ghost has been following you, like, I think ever since you came back.”</p><p>Much longer than that, you think.</p><p>He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, news flash, Klaus - I’ve killed a lot of people.”</p><p>“No,” Klaus says immediately. “I don’t think you killed this one. As a matter of fact, this is the only one I’ve seen around you. I’ve never seen any of your victims.” Klaus hesitates. “Was there, uh, someone you were really close to who died, maybe?”</p><p>“No,” he says shortly.</p><p>Just you guys, you know he’s thinking.</p><p>“If you’re so curious,” he continues, “why not ask the ghost yourself?”</p><p>Klaus slides a glance at you. “Yeah, I guess I could,” he says slowly.</p><p>You’re suddenly nervous. No one’s heard your voice in ages. Does it even still work?</p><p>“So . . .” Klaus says to you. “What’s your name?”</p><p>You don’t remember.</p><p>That should probably make you sad, but it doesn’t.</p><p>You don’t know what your name is, so you say the only one that pops into your head.</p><p>“Dolores,” Klaus repeats, his eyes widening as he shoots a look at the boy.</p><p>That wasn’t fair, you immediately think as the boy’s head snaps up to stare at Klaus with narrowed eyes. You shouldn’t have said that, but it’s too late now.</p><p>He’s suddenly standing right next to Klaus, glaring at where he thinks you are. He’s a little off, courtesy of being shorter than you, but it’s the closest he’s ever come to looking at you, so you’ll take it.</p><p>“I know they’re not Dolores,” he says, “but I want to see what they look like.”</p><p>Klaus shrugs. “Okey-dokey.” Blue mist swirls around the medium’s hands, and then that same haze seems to envelop you.</p><p>And then the boy looks you in the eye.</p><p>You smile, and you hope he can see all of your love in that smile.</p><p>Confusion softens his gaze. “You’re not Dolores,” he says, “but . . . I feel like I know you.” The confusion transforms into something closer to fear, maybe a little awe. “I know you so<em> well</em>. Why is that?”</p><p>You can’t find words to express how overjoyed you are for him to finally be directing his words at you, to finally speak and be heard by him. “I’ve been with you the whole time,” you say. “Since your first day in the apocalypse.”</p><p>“Why stay?” he asks softly. “Why stay after all that time?”</p><p>You look at him, surprised. “I couldn’t leave you alone,” you say.</p><p>He looks bewildered by that answer, but it’s the truth.</p><p>You reach out a hand and cup his face. “I’m so proud of the man you’ve become.” You draw him in for a hug, knowing he hates it and not caring. “I’m glad I got to watch you grow up,” you say even though it’s suddenly hard to talk around the lump in your throat. “You’ve done <em> so well</em>.”</p><p>“Wait,” the boy gasps, tearing away from you. “I remember seeing you. In the apocalypse.” An emotion you can’t place flashes across his face. “I found your body in the basement of a house.”</p><p>Right, you vaguely remember dying in a basement. But why does it ma-</p><p>“You were holding a baby,” he says, staring directly at you.</p><p>Oh.</p><p>
  <em> Oh. </em>
</p><p>You’d forgotten.</p><p>How could you have forgotten folding around your child in a last-ditch attempt to protect him from the smoke that filled the room?</p><p>“My son,” you say numbly, and suddenly that day comes rushing back. “You reminded me of him.”</p><p>It was the dark hair, mostly, because your son’s eyes were brown, whereas the boy’s are green.</p><p>“I wanted to do for you what I couldn’t do for him,” you say quietly.</p><p>Save him.</p><p>Watch him grow old.</p><p>To your utter surprise, the boy throws his arms around you. “You did,” he whispers.</p><p>You almost cry, but there are no tears in the afterlife, you find out.</p><p>There is a light, though.</p><p>And you finally see it.</p><p>“Thank you,” he says before the light envelops you completely.</p><p><em> Thank </em> you<em>, </em> you think, <em>for letting me be what you needed.</em></p>
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